This volume the third in The Library of America gathering the novels of Philip K. Dick —following Four Novels of the 1960s and Five Novels of the 1960s and 70s—brings together four books from the later phase of Dick’s career when religious revelation always an element of his fiction became a dominant and irresistible theme. Here Dick moves beyond the constraints of generic science fiction producing the works responsible for his growing reputation as an irreplaceable American visionary. The collection opens with A Maze of Death (1970) a darkly speculative thriller that foreshadows Dick’s final novels. Mysteriously summoned to the planet Delmak-O a motley group of colonists attempts to survive together in a hostile new world. Along the way they are forced to confront not only one another but also the nature of the God—or “Mentufacturer”—who determines their destiny. Dick’s life was changed utterly by a psychic break he later referred to as “the events of 2-3-74”: his sense of everyday reality fell away and he experienced what he came to believe was a mystical revelation. The writings of the remainder of his career attempt in various ways to understand and explain this visionary experience. In VALIS (1981)—at times close to a memoir of what he went through—he creates a harrowing self-portrait of a man confronting a “Vast Active Living Intelligence System ” torn between conflicting interpretations of what might be gnostic illumination or mental collapse. In The Divine Invasion (1981) the life of a solitary off-world colonist is hijacked by a local alien who turns out to be the Yahweh of Judeo-Christian tradition. Returning to Earth with his pregnant wife in tow Dick’s hapless Herb Asher finds himself thrust into the middle of an apocalyptic war between Good and Evil. Conceived as a sequel to VALIS the novel is a powerful exploration of divine revelation and its human consequences. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982) Dick’s last novel is by turns a theological mystery story a roman à clef and a starkly disillusioned portrait of contemporary California life. Based loosely on the career of Bishop James Pike Dick’s close friend and a kindred spirit the novel’s title character gives up his comfortable place in the church hierarchy in a tragic quest for enlightenment. Seeking an ultimate and shocking truth behind the sacred texts of his religion he leaves behind a wounded world—a world that his daughter-in-law one of Dick’s most fondly delineated characters must begin to piece together.
